Liberal Arts: Bringing Back the Bottom Line

College ain't worth what it used to be. So says my friend Professor Richard B. Freeman of the Economics Department. In his recent book. The Overeducated American, he computes the dollar return on the cost of college and finds it no better than the return on Grade B corporate bonds.

Goodness, what a serious matter. Unless college can deliver a better pay-out, liberal education is bound to suffer the fate of other respectable but low-return activities like religion, love and honesty. Parents will stop investing in their children's education and shift to soybean futures. Students will abandon college classrooms for brokerage offices. Professors of economics will have to go to work!

Fortunately Professor Freeman's alarm has awakened educators, who now are rightly concerned with the financial rewards of college. I am pleased to report that Harvard is already hard at work to demonstrate to its students that, while a liberal education does not improve the intellect, it does indeed improve the balance sheet. The object of college is not the full mind but the full larder. Pearls of Harvard wisdom are negotiable.

Next year's Catalogue of Instruction will list for each course--along with its examination group and whether Friday's class is optional--the anticipated dollar return. On study cards, students will compute their combined price earnings ratio for the term. Excerpts from the revised "prospectus" of courses demonstrate that the faculty knows the value of a buck:

English 12B, Shakespeare. (10 to 20 per cent return, higher for those resistant to poetry.) A general survey of the tragedies with special attention to the relationship between their themes and the Gross National Product; the effect of variance in interest rates on Polonius's advice to Laertes.

Humanities 9a, Introduction to Folklore and Mythology. (15 per cent guaranteed, 25 per cent for those going into advertising.) Traditional narrative and myth examined as an aid to the interchange of goods; role of the jester at royal court sessions, sales meetings and trade association conventions.

Fine Arts 13, Introduction to the Economics of Art. Intended to increase the student's perception of the value of works of art; advantages of ownership over creation, with special reference to the tax treatment of capital gains.

Statistics 103, Introduction to Statistics. An introduction to the basic concepts and methodology of statistics. Students will gain skills in handling elementary problems of the probability, distribution and random number of dollars. Caveat: Students actually expecting to rely on statistics can expect a greater return by taking Statistics 135, Introduction to Statisticians.

Arabic Aab. Elementary Arabic [Intensive]. $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Guided by the new catalogue, students will shun pre-professional courses and embrace the arts, the humanities, the "impractical" social and physical sciences. Why settle for the cash value of an M.D., J.D., or M.B.A. when the return on truth is infinite? It is an Adam Smith dream: the profit motive, at play in the market place of ideas, will save liberal education.

Or will it? Can we rely on students' selfish instinct for money grubbing? Maybe students today are more altruistic. Perhaps they will resist the attraction of the high dollar return on Shakespeare and Fine Arts and continue preparing themselves for lives dedicated to those non-monetary goals of Health, Justice, and Corporate Happiness.

The possibility of students' behaving so selflessly is heightened by the model offered by members of the faculty, always ready to give of themselves when called on for advice by government or industry and never to be found among students taking a course at the University. The lucrative route of expanding their liberal education is one which faculty members have disdained altruistically.

Fortunately one of Dean Rosovsky's task forces now proposes to protect students from their own altruism and from the risk they might emulate the Faculty's sacrifice. A high-return core curriculum would be required--just in the nick of time. For if the administrators and faculty of the University were to put the first priority on attracting students to college courses of no financial return, the nation's flickering economic recovery from the recession might be doomed.

[Frank D. Fisher '47 is director of the Office of Career Services and Off-Campus Learning.]